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6 Tips for Successful Influencer Marketing

Do the Groundwork

When you want influencers to engage with your product or service you need to do the groundwork first to build a relationship with the influencer. Identify relevant influencers to connect with using tools such as Traacker or GetLittlebird and then focus on building the relationship. Think about how you can help the influencer. Share their content, promote their books, answer their questions.The more you can help the more they will want to help.

Let your influencers have creative freedom.

Influencers got to where they are, in terms of popularity, because of their personality. It’s important that you let them have full creative control when promoting your product or service. What you think might work potentially won’t gel with their audience.

They engage with their audience all day long and know what they will respond to and what will push them away. When you allow them to control the creative direction you are going to end up with a much more organic feeling post and a better end result.

Have a Compelling and Engaging Story

There’s a huge misunderstanding online when it comes to the term “influencer.” Most people labeled as influencers are really just popular. Influence is the ability to actually persuade someone into taking action. Popular people online often have built trust with their community and are seen as an authority – but may not be able to actually influence others to take action. If your target audience matches their engaged audience, the best tip I can provide is to work on a compelling and engaging story for the influencer to share and the action you’d like their audience to take when they share it. While the influencer may not be able to provide a personally compelling story, sharing one can make all the difference. A story that is relevant to the audience, combined with the trust and authority with the influencer, will push the most people to a conversion.

Know Their Beat & Make Them Shine

One common way to incorporate influencer marketing is featuring expert opinions on your blog and a winning formula for this ultimately brings value to your audience, the influencers you want to connect with and you. When you choose the right people, you end up with a win-win for both of you and that should be your ultimate goal.

The better you can understand the personal objectives of the influencers you are trying to reach, the better you can appeal to them when trying to engage them in your campaign. For example, if you’re doing an article on “Why Mobile Marketing Is The Future,” then your best place to start is finding people who are already championing that with their personal brand.

When you know the beat of the influencer you’re trying to reach, position your pitch so it’s clear what they have to gain from it and how that aligns with what they are already doing. As a side note, make sure you tell them some numbers related to your audience (traffic + email subscribers) and how you plan to promote the content that will feature them.

Don’t worry if your numbers aren’t ridiculously huge right away, the more important thing is that you’re honest, look professional and, more importantly, the influencer looks good in the final product.

Remember, you aren’t producing infomercials.

An influencer holding up your product with a, “Buy this product” caption isn’t going to be well received. You aren’t trying to create an infomercial that simply lists all of the amazing benefits.

You want the influencer to create an organic post — something that doesn’t reek of being overly promotional. When you partner with the correct influencer sometimes a picture of them with your product in a natural setting is all you need. They don’t have to tell their audience to buy it — they notice on their own. This has a lot to do with the very first tip above — giving the influencer complete creative control.

Constantly track, measure and analyze your campaign.

You must know whether your influencer efforts are working or not. There isn’t a plug-and-play success formula. The number of likes or comments a post receives isn’t an indication of a successful campaign.

Dive into your Google Analytics and look at your referral traffic to see if you notice a large increase from the social networks you are running influencer posts. If you have goal established, did you notice a large increase in leads or sales? Did your own social profiles see increased followers and engagement? Are your sales numbers through the roof? These are all questions you will need to answer.

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